Exclusive: Windows 7 RC set for April 10, 2009

There have been so many dates flying around concerning the upcoming Release Candidate for Windows 7, and it's beginning to become a daily subject in the blogosphere. Just when you thought that we were going to see a Windows 7 RC by the end of February, a trusted source within Microsoft has informed Neowin that the RC will not be ready by the end of February.

At this time, Windows 7 RC is internally being tested and the official release date is set for April 10, 2009. The Windows team is right on schedule with development, and if there are no significant problems over the next few weeks the April 10, 2009 release date will remain in tact.

Not much information is available at this time. We're uncertain if the release will be a world-wide, and Microsoft is expected to do more testing before releasing a RC build to the public. With that in mind, TechNet and MSDN subscribers should be the first to receive the RC build. A recent email conversation between Paul, over at GeekSmack, and Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft Senior Vice President of Windows, revealed that there have been over 500,000 suggestions since the public launch of the Windows 7 Beta.

Sinofsky mentioned that, "recently we've seen people talk about 'RC Builds' and the like. First, all builds since the beta are RC builds since by definition that is the next milestone. But by far the most humorous element has been that the build numbers blogged about are higher than our current build. Today's build is 7046, but it hasn't completed yet :-)."

Other than the UAC fixes that were highlighted earlier this month, not much is known as to what has been changed or fixed in these internal builds, we'll keep you up to date with more information as it comes our way.

Update (1:14 PM -6 GMT): Emil Protalinski over at Ars Technica has apparently spoke with Steven Sinofsky, and he has said, "The build will be available broadly". This isn't a normal thing for Microsoft to do, however we will wait and see what Microsoft has in store for us in the coming weeks.

Microsoft outlines Windows 7 RC changes | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

The latest post on Microsoft’s Engineering Windows 7 blog highlights some of the changes that have been made to the Windows 7 OS between beta 1 and RC.

In all thirty six changes are outlined in all. Let’s take a look at some of the more important changes.

Microsoft accidentally confirms Windows 7 RC coming in May | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Microsoft accidentally confirms Windows 7 RC coming in May

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft posted prematurely a download page for the Windows 7 Release Candidate and — gasp! — one with a date of May 2009 attached to it.

The Windows team has been doing its best not to talk specific dates in advance of delivering any of its milestone builds. (No published dates means no one can ever say you’re late, right?)

Previous reports had pegged Microsoft’s one and only RC as arriving in April.

ArsTechnica has a screen shot of the Win 7 RC download page. As Ars notes, the RC download period is set to last through June 2009 and the RC set to expire in June 2010. Ars also grabbed a shot of the expected hardware requirements for the Windows 7 RC:

Internet access (to download Windows 7 RC and get updates)

A PC with these minimum recommended specifications:

1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor or higher
1 GB of system memory or more
16 GB of available disk space
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
DVD-R/W Drive

I’m still betting the Softies are going to RTM in Q3 of this year, whether the RC is slightly later than expected or not. We’ll see….

First screenshots of build Windows 7 build 7077 leak - Ars Technica

The first screenshots of Windows 7 build 7077 have started to leak, and the 32-bit version of the build is available in the wild.

As you can see above, screenshots of Windows 7 build 7077 have started to appear around the Web. There are also reports that the 32-bit version has been leaked and is readily available on various websites. Nevertheless, a good source has told me there are no noticeable differences between build 7068 and any of the 707x builds. This is much more important than the information leak of build 7070, though it's not immediately apparently. In the "About Windows" dialog box, there isn't an actual build string as we've seen in previous interim builds. It simply says "Version 6.1 (Build 7077)." The only other build we've seen this for is in the beta build released to the public (which also was leaked before Microsoft gave the download to testers): "Version 6.1 (Build 7000)."

The build string for the latest build we know about is "7077.0.090404-1255," which indicates that it was compiled less than a week ago: April 4, 2009, at 12:55pm. Some of you will realize that this is 20 minutes after the supposed build 7105 was compiled, which is widely rumored to be a milestone build. Microsoft only increments the second digit of the build number if an important point in development has been reached. The software giant is expected to give a new build to testers this month, and a public Release Candidate build is coming in May.

In related news, Microsoft is preparing to release an alpha of the Windows 7 Software Logo Toolkit for download on April 14. Companies can use the toolkit to verify an application's compliance against the requirements of the Windows 7 Client Software Logo Program and generate a compliance report based on the outcome of the tests.

Mark your calendars: Windows 7 RC to go public on May 5 | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

Mark your calendars: Windows 7 RC to go public on May 5

Oops, Microsoft did it again.

Someone in Redmond accidentally published a page offering downloads of the Windows 7 release candidate to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Here’s the text that appears in the middle of that page at the Microsoft OEM Partner site:

see linked article

The link goes to the Windows 7 download page at MSDN, where the only software available today is the Windows 7 beta release (build 7000) from January, along with some updates intended for that beta.

Based on this unintentional announcement, the May 5 date appears to be a solid bet for the public release. (In fact, it appears to be a more specific schedule than last month’s now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t download announcement.) If past patterns hold true, the actual head start for MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be a week or so ahead of that date.

Update: Emil Protalinski at Ars Technica confirms that the download is not imminent:

A few faithful readers got this quote from the Microsoft Online Concierge Chat: “Currently the Windows 7 RC has not been avaiable through the TechNet subscription yet, only the Microsoft OEM partners such as Dell, Siemens are taking part in the RC’s this period of test.”

That matches what I’ve been told from other sources as well.

Is that an indication that the default desktop has changed from 7000 to 7077 or is it just a lack of graphics drivers?

In reality that screen looks normal. I think, my SnagIt capture program malfunctioned.

Interesting! Announced yesterday, Windows XP Mode.

TG Daily - Microsoft confirms Windows 7 RC coming next week

Microsoft confirms Windows 7 RC coming next week

Redmond (WA) – Microsoft is racing towards a public release of Windows 7. The first release candidate will be made available to the public on May 5, the company said.

Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc confirmed previous reports that Windows 7 RC will be released in early May, indicating that the company is well on its way to release the final version by late summer and provide PC vendors with the new operating system to support sales for the Christmas season. Microsoft originally had said that the software would be released in 2010, but early rumors suggested that Q3 2009 has been the internal target release date from the beginning.

“I’m pleased to share that the RC is on track for April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers,” LeBland wrote on the Windows Team blog. “Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th.”

The first Windows 7 beta was released during CES in January of this year.